Thank you, Kenny and Neil, for the compliment. Just so others understand, I am not soliciting work here on Mobile Read. My editing is limited to nonfiction (primarily medical written by doctors for doctors and education written by educators for educators) and I do not work directly with authors; I work only for established traditional publishers. I hope knowing that will add a tiny bit of credence to what I write
.
FWIW, the asking of the original question by James has led me to add the topic to my blog. I hope to draw input from colleagues, because the issue is a difficult one. As Jaxx notes, it is easy to claim to be a professional editor, but how does one prove it or demonstrate it to a potential client? In my case, I'm working in a narrow area and thus have built a reputation over my 26 years, but even so, things change and proving that I am a professional editor requires constant reproving.
For those interested in my blog post, it is
Finding a Professional Editor: The Needle in the Haystack Problem. Although it is currently early (I only posted the article a couple of hours ago), what will be interesting will be reader comments.